“Idiot,” she whispered under her breath, and was vaguely aware of other footsteps on the old steps behind her.

Telling herself she wasn’t going to let her own paranoia get the better of her, she wended her way down the battered old staircase where, suddenly, she was swimming against a tide of officers and visitors moving upward. Crowds had always bothered her, but she fought a surge of panic as she descended to the main floor. There she wended her way through a wide hallway to the front doors.

Outside she felt as if she could breathe again even though the sun was intense, heat still rising from the streets where late-afternoon shadows lengthened. She’d blown it with Bentz. She knew that and mentally kicked herself for the way she’d handled the meeting. Maybe she should have come to him first rather than head to Baton Rouge, but she’d thought she could gain more information at the college and offer it up, maybe set some wheels in motion. She’d thought she could help.

She’d been wrong.

“Fool,” she told herself as she walked along the sidewalk. Her meeting with Bentz had been a disaster.

A breath of wind chased through the magnolia trees, rustling the leaves and bringing with it the scent of the river, thick and musty, and reminding her that New Orleans wasn’t her native home. She, like so many others here, was a transplant.

She’d been born and raised in Bad Luck, Texas, until middle school, when her father had gotten a job at Tulane University and packed up his wife, twins, and family dog to move to New Orleans. Since that time she’d called Louisiana home. Now, of course, she felt as if she’d lived here forever.

She loved this town. But with each passing hour of not hearing from the Denning girls, Brianna was more and more certain the 21 Killer was right here in her backyard.

Her stomach squeezed at the thought as she jaywalked across the street. She’d found 21 terrifying as well as fascinating from a purely psychological point of view. What was his need to kill twins on their birthdays, the very date they became adults?

She couldn’t help but wonder if his journey to New Orleans had something to do with her rather than Bentz. After all, she’d started rattling the cages of the LAPD not long ago, when he was already on the move.

Ridiculous! He knows nothing about you. Nothing. How could he? And why would he be interested? You’re far older than twenty-one, your twin sister long dead. You aren’t his type.

But she had been stirring up a hornet’s nest. He could have easily found out that she was fighting to get Donovan Caldwell released, that she was determined to see the real killer hunted down.